


Renaissance

by mirawonderfulstar



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Church Sex, Comfort Sex, Hedonism, Historical, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Renaissance Italy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 11:28:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15484761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirawonderfulstar/pseuds/mirawonderfulstar
Summary: After a particularly bad discorporation, Aziraphale disappears for some time. Crowley goes to find him.





	Renaissance

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know shit about the Italian Renaissance and did very minimal research for this fic on Wikipedia. This is, first and foremost, a PWP so you’ll have to excuse me, potential religious history scholars in the audience, for anything that jumps out at you as out of place here.

Crowley stayed in the back, in the shadows. It wasn’t hard, in the small, dimly lit old church. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised to find Aziraphale here. After all, he knew why the angel had returned to Rome, and it had nothing to do with the art and architecture that was beginning to blossom there. It wasn’t a coincidence that, with the face of the city changing rapidly all around them, Aziraphale would choose an out-of-the-way building and a small congregation where he would be more or less left alone.

The demon sighed listening to the sermon, feeling a soft and terrible ache in his chest at watching Aziraphale move about stiffly behind the altar, closed off, separate, enshrined and protected from the rest of the world in his long black robe. It was a recent trend, that. Probably there was some theological reasoning behind it, having to do with abstinence or the rejection of hedonism or whatever. Crowley wasn’t fond of it himself and he suspected Aziraphale wasn’t either, but he hadn’t had a chance to ask him. He hadn’t spoken to Aziraphale in a number of years, actually, and really it had just been good luck and five and a half millennia of association with him that had enabled him to find him again.

The last time he’d seen Aziraphale had been in 1463, in a small town in southern Germany. Crowley didn’t like to think about it if he could help it. It had been his fault Aziraphale had been discorporated and part of him was acutely aware that the angel would be well within his rights to blame this whole thing- the discorporation _and_ the subsequent hiding out in Rome- on him. But, he thought with a wry smile as the mass ended and people began to file out of the church, having a good yell at The Adversary might be exactly what Aziraphale needed to pull himself together.

It still wasn’t an entirely enticing prospect. Crowley waited a moment longer, standing behind the very last pew, under the balcony which held the choir, leaning against the dark stone of the wall. Waited and watched Aziraphale. He seemed to relax at last when the final members of the congregation exited the church, closing the door behind them. His body seemed to unfold, the tension in his bearing disappearing now there was nobody to observe him. Crowley recognized something in his posture that suggested he was thinking about unfurling his wings for a moment. He didn’t. Instead he went around the area behind the altar, blowing out candles and placing the book from the pulpit back where it belonged. Crowley thought he heard a soft sigh from the angel as he did so. With a small breath of his own, Crowley squared his shoulders and headed forward along the edge of the pews, one hand trailing lightly along the old wooden backs.

He saw Aziraphale turn and peer into the nave. “Who’s there?” He asked, his voice firm and clear as a bell. Crowley, acting on a split-second impulse, ducked into one of the confessional booths, sitting down on the hard wood seat and taking a deep breath, waiting for the angel he knew would come.

Aziraphale didn’t disappoint him. A few moments later the other little chamber in the booth opened and a flicker of light from the church’s stained glass windows shone through the grate onto Crowley’s face before Aziraphale shut his door behind him and they were both plunged into darkness again.

“Well?” Aziraphale murmured, in a tone both irritated and weary. “I announced during the sermon there would be no sacrament of confession this week.”

“I was lissstening.” Crowley responded in a whisper. There was silence for a moment.

“Crowley.” Aziraphale said. It wasn’t a question. Crowley smiled to himself.

“Aziraphale.” The name was like a caress in his mouth. How long had it been since he’d last said it aloud? Fifty years or more. A lifetime.

Whatever sentiments Crowley was feeling were evidently not shared by the angel who snapped through the grate at him. “Why are you here?”

“I could ask you the same question. This isn’t exactly prime real estate. Not really your style.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” Aziraphale said, very coldly. “This church needed a priest, and I happened to be passing through.”

“Passing through.” Crowley murmured, rolling his eyes. “Right. Just like I’m passing through this crumbling little relic from the 11th century while I take in the sights.”

Aziraphale was silent again. Then, just when Crowley was sure he was going to get up and leave, he let out a long sigh. “What do you want, Crowley?” He sounded bone-tired.

“For you to stop with the martyr act. We both know you’re not happy living like this.”

“I believe I’m perfectly justified in, what was it, this ‘martyr act’, seeing as how the last time I saw you I was, in fact, martyred.” His voice was cold fury, and Crowley steeled himself against it as he leaned forward, kneeling before the grate that separated him from Aziraphale.

“This booth is for confessing your sins, yes? Then here’s mine. I’m sorry. What happened in Germany was entirely my fault and I’ve spent the last fifty years regretting it.”

“You have?” Aziraphale sounded completely taken aback.

Crowley let out a snort. “Of course I have, angel. You don’t think I _wanted_ to see you burned at the stake?”

Aziraphale made a sound that travelled through the grate and settled in Crowley’s throat like incense or ash. He hesitated for a moment, unsure, and then he got up from where he was kneeling, opened the door, and climbed in Aziraphale’s side.

 Aziraphale tensed up, staring at Crowley in disbelief as he insinuated himself into the small booth and twined his fingers into Aziraphale’s hair. “Crowley, what-“

Crowley kissed him. He tasted exactly as Crowley would have expected him to taste, something dark and holy and so _Aziraphale_. The angel shivered as Crowley pulled back to look at him in the tight space.

“Well.” Aziraphale said after a moment, in a very different kind of tone than he’d been using earlier. Crowley grinned, repositioning himself so he was straddling Aziraphale instead of trying to stand in this space which was really too small for what Crowley was now planning to do. He heard Aziraphale’s breath catch as Crowley’s hips settled against his.

“This really isn’t… an appropriate setting for this sort of thing.” Aziraphale said with a gasp as Crowley rolled his hips.

Crowley chuckled. “No, it really isn’t.” He leaned forward and kissed Aziraphale’s jaw, eliciting another gasp. “But somehow I don’t think you’re going to stop me.”

There was a loud thunk as the back of Aziraphale’s head made contact with the wood of the booth. Crowley smiled and placed an open-mouthed kiss against the soft skin below Aziraphale’s ear as his fingers flew up to begin undoing the row of buttons on his robe. This really was a ridiculous garment, Crowley thought with a little huff of irritation as he undid four buttons and failed to make any significant progress towards his goal of trailing his tongue along the pulse point in Aziraphale’s neck. He considered miracling it away and decided against it when Aziraphale let out a little sound of pleasure at Crowley’s nails scrabbling against the skin of his throat as he fumbled another button.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, his voice breathless, Crowley closed his eyes momentarily at the sound of it, leaning his forehead against Aziraphale’s. He felt the angel’s hands on his hips, pulling him closer, and he bit back a groan as he felt Aziraphale pressing up against him.

Crowley fluttered a line of kisses down Aziraphale’s exposed neck, drinking in the sounds he made. The angel’s hands were tightening on his hips to such a point Crowley was sure he would have bruises the next day if he didn’t choose to do something about them, and he rather thought he wouldn’t.

“ _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale’s voice broke on the word, and Crowley stopped what he was doing, concerned, and looked at him in the dark. Aziraphale’s eyes were squeezed shut and there were tear tracks on his face. Crowley’s own eyes widened.

“Aziraphale?” Crowley said, hesitating for the first time. “I’m sorry, Aziraphale, are you- am I-“

“Don’t stop.” Aziraphale cut him off. “ _Please_ , Crowley, don’t stop.”

So Crowley didn’t. He worked his way down Aziraphale’s robes, kissing and stroking as he went, noting with some dismay that Aziraphale had evidently not been feeling up to his usual enjoyment of food or drink with this body if his distinct lack of stomach fat was anything to go by. He felt another guilty pang for 1463. Kneeling on the floor of the confessional booth, Crowley spread Aziraphale’s legs and hooked them over his shoulders, repositioning the angel’s hips as the robes fell away.

Aziraphale quickly stifled his cry with a hand over his mouth, and he looked down at Crowley with such an expression of adoration on his face that Crowley felt himself blush. Crowley stroked his fingertips over the inside of Aziraphale’s thigh, feeling the smooth skin there, and placed a small, closed-mouthed kiss at the junction of his hip. Aziraphale’s hand rested in Crowley’s hair, petting him gently, fondly. Crowley sighed and let his eyes drift closed for a moment. Then, with one swift, easy movement, Crowley swallowed Aziraphale down.

The angel’s moan filled the booth, and Crowley watched him through his eyelashes as his back arched. The hand that wasn’t tangled in Crowley’s hair fell away from his mouth and scrabbled for purchase on the wall, and it was all Aziraphale could do to hold himself some semblance of upright. Crowley smiled, gratified, and turned his attention to the cock down his throat.

It was over within a matter of minutes. Aziraphale came with a choked sound, trembling, releasing his hand from Crowley’s hair. When Crowley straightened up again and slithered back onto his lap to press a kiss to his jaw, Aziraphale took his face in his hands and kissed him, hard, on the mouth.

“Aziraphale…” Crowley began when he’d let go again, but Aziraphale shook his head.

“Thank you.”

Crowley leered. “For sucking you off in your own church?”

“For…” Aziraphale stroked Crowley’s cheek, biting his lip as he thought. “For reminding me that I’ve been… absent from the world for too long.”

“Of course, angel.” Crowley murmured, feeling that same horrible tenderness in his chest as he began extracting himself from Aziraphale’s arms and preparing to climb out of the booth. “I’ll see you later, yeah? Maybe we could go have a look around the city? I hear there’s some contention surrounding that Michelangelo fellow’s work on that chapel.”

“Which I’m sure you have nothing to do with.” Aziraphale said with a raised brow.

Crowley merely shrugged and offered Aziraphale a hand out of the confessional booth as they made plans to meet.

When Crowley arrived in the piazza they’d agreed upon the next day, it was to find Aziraphale already there, dressed all in white, looking into a fountain with a small but beatific smile. The sunlight from the water danced across him, lighting him up like gold, and Crowley felt a smile of his own stretch, unbidden, across his face.

 


End file.
